The Coverage That Pays When Nobody Else Will

Somebody runs a red light, your car is wrecked, you are hurt, and their policy does not exist. This is the scenario uninsured motorist coverage was built for, and it is the coverage people most often discover they declined.

It is in your policy unless you removed it

Insurance Code section 11580.2 provides that a bodily injury liability policy issued or delivered in California must contain uninsured motorist coverage at limits at least equal to those specified in the statute, and that the insurer and a named insured may agree in writing to delete that provision. In other words, the default is that you have it, and not having it required your signature.

That matters practically. If your declarations page shows no uninsured motorist coverage, a written rejection exists in the file. You are entitled to ask for a copy of it, and you are entitled to change your mind and add the coverage back.

The two versions of the problem

Uninsured means the at-fault driver has no liability coverage at all. Underinsured means they have coverage, but not enough to cover the harm they caused. The second is common precisely because California's minimum limits under Vehicle Code section 16056, currently $30,000 for injury to one person and $60,000 for injury to two or more, can be exhausted by a single serious injury.

What it covers

Primarily bodily injury: your injuries and your passengers' injuries, up to the limits you bought. There is also a separate uninsured motorist property damage coverage in California, addressing damage to your vehicle, which is a different coverage with different rules and its own limit. Check your declarations page for both by name rather than assuming one implies the other.

The hit-and-run rule you must know in advance

Section 11580.2 treats a vehicle whose owner or operator is unknown as an uninsured motor vehicle, but for that situation it imposes two conditions: the bodily injury must have arisen out of physical contact of the vehicle with the insured or with the vehicle the insured was occupying, and the insured or someone acting for them must have reported the accident within 24 hours to the police.

Read that twice, because it is the kind of requirement nobody learns until they have failed it. If a driver hits you and leaves, call the police the same day, without waiting to see how bad the damage turns out to be.

Why people decline it, and why we push back

It is declined to reach a lower monthly figure, usually by someone buying minimum limits and looking only at the total. The trade being made is real: the coverage that protects you is being removed to reduce the price of coverage that protects other people. Industry estimates have long put roughly one in six California drivers on the road without insurance, and while that figure is an estimate rather than something we can verify for you, the direction of it is not in dispute.

How to check what you have

Raising the limits is usually the smaller decision

Uninsured motorist limits are commonly offered up to the level of your own liability limits. Moving from the lowest available level to something meaningful is a smaller change to a premium than most people expect, because the coverage is priced separately from liability and it is not the largest part of a policy.

We are not going to put a figure on that, because it depends on your carrier, your record and your car. What we will say is that it is worth asking for the number rather than assuming you cannot afford it.

Find uninsured motorist bodily injury on your declarations page and read the limits next to it. Then find uninsured motorist property damage. Then ask what it would take to raise them. If you would rather we simply looked, send us the page.